


things you said that I wasn't meant to hear

by dizzywhiz



Series: tumblr prompt fills [1]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, McKinley!Blaine, No Character Death, Skank!Kurt, Some Canon Adjustments, s2 era, some canon events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27272824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzywhiz/pseuds/dizzywhiz
Summary: There's a boy that Blaine is intrigued by, and there's a conversation he overhears, and there's a moment that is the beginning of something important.(or a prompt fill for: things you said that I wasn't meant to hear)
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel
Series: tumblr prompt fills [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1991341
Comments: 6
Kudos: 58





	things you said that I wasn't meant to hear

**Author's Note:**

> I've been having a lot of fun filling klaine prompts over on tumblr, and I thought this one turned out long enough to stand on its own!
> 
> if you're reading hit the switch, I hope to be back to it soon, and if you don't follow me on tumblr, you can do so @kurtstinypurse :-)

The blue-haired boy in Blaine’s biology class is a bit of an enigma.

It’s not that Blaine’s been _watching_ him, but he knows the boy was in his history class last semester, too, and he’s seen the boy around the school building, and Blaine is just-

He’s just observant. That’s all it is.

He’s observed the blue-haired boy go from a _brunette_ boy, actually, to a brunette-with-a-shocking-blue-highlight, to just _blue,_ bright and bold and daring.

He’s observed that it brings out the blue in the boy’s eyes, too, which Blaine noted the few times they brushed past one another closely in the crush of people in the hallways.

He’s observed that the boy went from any other student to someone more closed off, combative, defensive, _detached._

_Hiding._

Sometimes, when he’s bored in class and observing the back of the boy’s head, a few rows in front of him, Blaine wonders what changed.

Something would have had to change.

But Blaine knows what it’s like to hide, and he knows what it’s like to be afraid, and he doesn’t want anyone else to feel that way.

He doesn’t know what to do about it, though, doesn’t know how to help. Not when the boy doesn’t seem to want to be helped - or even noticed.

Instead, he’s the last one into class, and he’s the first one out, and Blaine barely ever sees him otherwise, only those handful of times in the hallway. Blaine’s never heard him speak a word, either, hasn’t ever heard him be called on in class, doesn’t even know his name.

And then Blaine stays behind one afternoon to help his art teacher do her spring cleaning, and when he comes out of the building, long after everyone else has left, he sees a shock of blue hair and _him,_ leaning against the wall, an unlit cigarette held between his fingers, talking into the phone.

He starts walking closer without even being aware that he’s moving, though he falters mid-step when the boy starts speaking, freezes when he realizes the boy sounds- _upset._

“That’s what you promised last week,” he sighs, sounding half exasperated, half dejected, all tired, all heartbreaking. “And the week before that. I just... When is it going to _change?”_

Blaine watches as the boy knocks his head back against the wall in frustration, and he winces at the sound of it, knowing it must hurt.

But pain is a feeling, he knows, and he knows, too, that sometimes feeling anything at all...

Sometimes it’s still better than nothing.

“No, I-I can’t get there today,” the boy says, and his voice is trembling, cracking. “My car broke down, and I can’t exactly get it _fixed_ when-”

He cuts himself off, and he lets out a shake of a breath, and he throws the unlit cigarette onto the ground, stomping it, and Blaine can feel the anger he’s putting into the movement, coming off of him in short, sharp waves.

Blaine wants to get closer, too afraid to do it, afraid of what will happen when he’s noticed.

_Hiding._

But he won’t leave, either, hasn’t even considered it, though he isn’t sure why.

He’s just- he’s drawn in, magnetic, compelled.

And then the boy hangs up, and he squeezes the phone in his hand in a white knuckled grip, and his shoulders slump as he looks down at the ground.

Blaine’s stepping up to him before he can think twice about it.

“Hey, I- I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but, um. Do you need a ride somewhere?” he asks, cringing internally at his stuttering, stammering, silly and foolish.

The boy jerks his head up, walls going up before Blaine’s very eyes, face gone neutral, cold.

“How long were you standing there?” he snaps, though Blaine hears that little shake in his voice again, under the surface, only recognizing it because he’d just heard it moments earlier.

“I....” Blaine’s voice is caught in his throat, overpowered by the lump of guilt that’s forming there, but he inhales, and he tries to swallow it down - and when he speaks again, it works.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

The boy flinches, and he lets out a humorless laugh, blue eyes gone ice cold as they shoot daggers at Blaine, eerily magnified, now, by his hair.

“Like it matters.”

Blaine knows he shouldn’t be here. He knows he shouldn’t have listened in, and he knows he shouldn’t have walked up, and he knows he shouldn’t _care,_ has no real reason to, but he knows, too, that he means it when he says, “It matters to me.”

_You matter to me. You just do._

The air turns thick between them, stilling entirely, as the boy blinks, and he blinks again, and Blaine just watches him do it, silent, holding his breath because the air isn’t breathable, anyways, not like this, not when it feels like Blaine’s very existence is hanging on the thread of whatever happens next.

When the boy speaks again, Blaine feels in his gut that it’s the beginning of something.

“Can you drive me to the hospital?”

* * *

Actually, it’s the last time the boy speaks, but Blaine barely notices as he drives - his head is spinning with all of the questions he wants to ask, all of the things he wants to know, though he can’t work up the nerve to ask about anything, afraid he’s already on the edge of pushing too far.

He wants to know _why_ he’s driving the boy to the hospital, for one thing. He wants to know who the boy was talking to, what the boy wants to change, why the boy can’t get his car fixed, why the boy’s hair is blue and why he guards himself so strictly and why his armor is so expertly-situated to look unbreakable, even though no one’s can _truly_ be unbreakable, not entirely.

He wants to know everything - but he’d accept _anything,_ just as a starting place.

It isn’t until they get to the hospital, and the boy mumbles his thanks, saying he’ll be fine getting home on his own, that Blaine works up the courage to try for that starting place, a jumping-off point, if he’s lucky.

“What’s your name?”

The boy pauses, halfway through climbing out of the car, and he looks over at Blaine, the briefest flash of what looks like hurt ghosting across his features, if it’s even anything at all.

And instead of answering, he gets out of the car, leaving Blaine confused, wondering, _wanting._

_-_

Oddly enough, they fall into a pattern.

It’s like they wordlessly agree that they _do_ this now, that Blaine meets the boy outside the school building after class gets out every afternoon, and they drive in a strange quiet, somewhere in between comfortable and awkward, and the boy thanks him, and that’s it.

That’s it, at least, until the boy starts talking - it’s like he’s given himself a quota of one sentence per car ride, but it’s _something,_ and every bit of it feels like everything.

It starts with the boy saying just one word: “Kurt.”

Blaine looks over at him, confused, and the boy looks right back at him, expressionless.

“My name.”

Right.

“My name’s Blaine,” he replies, feeling like he should.

“I know.”

_Right._

It feels tense, strange, murky, but Blaine leaves it, still shaken by the initial _Kurt_ at all - his name, his name, _his name._

It feels like a gift, but like one he already should have discovered for himself, one he missed out on all along.

He feels silly for that.

But regardless, those little offerings keep coming, and Blaine accepts them graciously, filing away in order to keep them safe, to use to add up to make sense of the blue-haired boy, to make sense of _Kurt._

There’s the car ride where Kurt shares that he’s visiting his dad, and then, in the next one, that his dad had a heart attack, that he’s comatose, and he has been for some time.

There’s the car ride where Kurt says that his dad is a mechanic, that he owns the tire shop over on Elm.

Blaine listens quietly - he always does, afraid to interject, afraid to scare him away.

But then there’s the car ride where Kurt admits that he doesn’t have anyone else, not besides his dad, that it’s been just the two of them since he was eight.

And Blaine can’t keep quiet anymore.

He squeezes the steering wheel under his hands, and he relaxes his grip, squeezes again, relaxes, and speaks.

“You have me. For anything,” he says, and he means it.

He can hear Kurt’s sharp inhale, right through his nose, but he stays quiet otherwise, just like Blaine expected him to.

But when Blaine pulls up to the entrance of the hospital this time, Kurt lingers a moment longer than usual, and so Blaine looks over at him, wondering.

Kurt’s eyes are shining, bluer than ever, with something like tears, though he blinks, and he turns away, and it’s gone, and then he’s gone, too, through the hospital doors in the blink of an eye.

And that’s it.

* * *

Blaine can’t sleep that night.

He can’t get the idea of Kurt being _alone_ out of his mind, coming home to a big, empty house, cooking himself dinner, doing homework alone, going to bed alone - all of it, alone.

It’s not like Blaine doesn’t get it.

He spends most of his time alone, too, footsteps and movements and even his breaths echoing impossibly loudly in his cold, silent house, his parents always away, always leaving him behind.

Blaine’s familiar with being alone - but it doesn’t mean he wants Kurt to be alone.

He briefly wonders if, maybe, they could be alone _together,_ if that would help, if anything could.

He finally falls asleep in the early hours of the morning, still trying to push the idea of that out of his mind.

Trying, trying, and failing.

* * *

Kurt isn’t at school the next day.

He isn’t there the next day, either, but it’s Friday, and so there’s nothing Blaine can do but spend the weekend wondering, worrying, wishing he’d worked up the nerve to exchange phone numbers, _something._

He tries Facebook, but he doesn’t even know Kurt’s last _name,_ and so he comes up short, figures a boy like Kurt wouldn’t have a profile, anyways.

He’s scared.

Scared for Kurt, scared for Kurt’s dad, just- _scared._

He feels stupid, too.

Stupid for not getting Kurt’s number, for learning such deep, personal information about Kurt but not learning the _basics,_ for not sharing anything of his own, for not doing _more,_ for being too _afraid_ to do more, for not _trying_ hard enough.

Never trying hard enough.

Always hiding, always afraid.

Blaine spends some time being angry, too, not only angry with himself for the things he did and the things he didn’t do, but angry with the world for dealing Kurt such an unfair hand, angry with the doctors for not doing _more_ and for not working _faster,_ even angry with Kurt, briefly, for not letting him in sooner.

But by the time Monday morning rolls around, he’s channeled his hurricane of thoughts and feelings and emotions into one goal: to track Kurt down, and to find out what’s going on, and to stop _hiding._

To _help._

He looks for Kurt everywhere - as he walks to class, as he eats lunch in the cafeteria, but he’s nowhere to be found.

It’s like he was never there.

Blaine’s starting to feel like he’s at a loss, but then he remembers the _one_ person who might know something, the one person who he’s seen Kurt with, if only a few times.

He finds her underneath the bleachers, puffing away at a cigarette, pushing her bright pink hair away from her face.

“Um, hey,” he says lamely, wincing at himself, feeling impossibly out of place.

Quinn eyes him suspiciously, silently, reminding him so much of Kurt that his heart aches.

And Kurt is the reason why he swallows his nerves, and he rights his chin, and he speaks again, needing answers, needing _something,_ when what he wants is everything, now more than ever.

“Do you have Kurt’s phone number?” 

It takes some convincing, explaining of his intentions, of his and Kurt’s history that feels like both a lifetime and no time at all, of his worries, of Kurt’s disappearance.

He wonders how much Quinn knows - maybe she knows more than him, maybe she knows even less.

It could be anything, and he doesn’t find out, but he _does_ get Kurt’s number, after all, and he holds his phone with trembling hands once he has it, walking away for privacy before reaching out.

Blaine knows Kurt won’t answer a call, not from a random number, and not if his dad is- not if he’s-

Instead, Blaine types a text, willing his thumbs to stop shaking long enough to do it.

 **From Blaine:** Hi, it’s Blaine. You haven’t been at school, and I wanted to make sure everything was okay.

There’s no reply by the time he goes back to class for his last one of the day, and there’s no reply, either, when he gets out of Glee rehearsal, or even when he goes home, even when he eats dinner.

He’s nearly asleep, nearly given up when his phone vibrates on the bed beside him, a shock of bright light from its screen illuminating the room, hurting his eyes.

But it’s him. It’s _him._

 **From Kurt:** What’s your address?

It’s not what Blaine expected - not anywhere near it.

There’s no possible way for Blaine to get _anything_ out of it at all, no information, no tone, no remote idea as to what’s going on, as to how Kurt is doing, how his dad is doing.

There’s nothing left to do but reply to Kurt’s text with his address.

And then he heads downstairs, not wanting to miss anything, and he curls up on the couch, and he waits.

* * *

Blaine has nearly dozed off by the time there’s a knock on the door, soft yet insistent, impossible to ignore.

It’s Kurt.

It’s Kurt, right there on the other side of the door, and when Blaine _opens_ that door, he’s going to find-

Well, he has no idea _what_ he’s going to find, and he’s too afraid to consider the possibilities.

And so, instead, he gets up, and he pads over to the front door, and he opens it, only to find Kurt standing there with red-rimmed eyes, hair a flop of blue over his forehead, and he’s-

He’s smiling _._

Kurt is _smiling,_ and Blaine’s never _seen_ him smile, and it’s closed-lipped and faint, but it’s there and Blaine can just _tell_ that it’s genuine, knows that Kurt wouldn’t ever do something like _smile_ without having a real, true reason to do it.

“Kurt,” Blaine says breathlessly, feeling like he’s knocked off of his feet, like the world is tilted on its axis, but it doesn’t matter, because there’s nothing on the planet, in the _universe,_ but Kurt standing there right in front of him, Kurt’s smile, _Kurt._

And then Kurt is _hugging_ him, flinging himself, really, at Blaine, and Blaine catches him because of _course_ he does, because he said that Kurt _had_ him and he _meant_ it, because _holding Kurt_ suddenly feels like exactly what he was made for, exactly what he was born to do.

“He woke up,” Kurt breathes, right in Blaine’s ear, voice trembling again but with a lightness, this time, a quality Blaine had never heard before. “He’s okay, Blaine. He’s gonna be okay.”

And then Blaine _finally_ lets out the breath he’s been holding since the day he overheard Kurt, since the day he heard Kurt say the things he wasn’t meant to hear, since he felt in his gut that it was the beginning of _something,_ that _they_ were the beginning of something.

He holds Kurt, close and tight and never wanting to let go, breathing and smiling and _existing_ together, until, all at once, holding him doesn’t feel like enough.

In a rush of a motion, Blaine pulls away, just far enough to do _this:_

To reach up and cup Kurt’s face in his hands, to look him in the eyes, those beautiful, shining blue eyes, full of multitudes of oceans and skies and all of the things Blaine is desperate to discover, to lean in, and to kiss him right on the mouth, full of all the things he’s held back for weeks, all of the things he never said, fear turned into bravery, _hiding_ turned into embracing, seizing, _doing._

And Kurt lets out a whimper, high and broken from the back of his throat, and he clutches Blaine closer, thumbs digging into his hips, stumbling forward and moving them until Blaine is pressed against the outside wall, right beside the front door, not caring who could drive by, who could see.

It’s relief and it’s acceptance and it’s apology and it’s understanding, but more than any of that, it’s _them,_ down to its very core, in every movement of their lips and press of their bodies and pulses of blood hot in their veins.

It’s them, and it will _be_ them, from that point forward, no longer hidden, no longer afraid.

No longer alone.


End file.
